


At The Base of All Things

by Whiskey-Nova (QueenXplsnMurder)



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Death, F/M, Hospital, Life/Death - Freeform, One Shot, Original Character(s), Separate from Time and Time Again, So many ideas for one-shots, couldn't get it out of my head, jurdan - Freeform, non-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:21:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenXplsnMurder/pseuds/Whiskey-Nova
Summary: A one-shot that I got into my head this evening. So I wrote it out to get it out of my head and will post rather than keep to myself.Some TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mentioned pre-term labour, car accident, food poisoning, death.Erm, not sure what else to say, I've not done one-shots before now. And this may not end up a one-shot if more comes to me. But for now it is a one-shot.COMPLETELY SEPARATE FROM TIME AND TIME AGAIN. (Which I will update in the coming week.)Characters belong to Holly Black not me. I just like twisting them for my own stories and ideas.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	At The Base of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> Un'beta'd as ever and was written in one long stream.  
> \- Apologies for any nonsensical parts.
> 
> Comments appreciated. Constructive criticism too.
> 
> Again: Disclaimer, characters belong to Holly Black.

I arrive at the hospital and begin the walk to her room, my white dress floats and moves around me as I put one foot in front of the other, knowing I would end up here to see her sooner rather than later and that it will be for the last time. I pay no mind to anyone else in the bustling corridors, ignoring staff, patients and visitors alike as I continue my way to see her. My bare feet barely make a sound and my hair swishes around my shoulders tickling the tops of my arms as I walk. I wrinkle my nose as the hospital smell overtakes my senses, you would think I would be used to it by now in my line of work but it's the one smell that fills me with dread and makes my chest ache - it's like a mix between sterility, cleanliness, heartbreak and pain. I block out the sounds surrounding me too as I step from one corridor to the next, focussing all my effort on finding her before it's too late.

As I make my way up to her room, moving around equipment and people in my path, I find myself pulled into memory lane.

I'd taken a special interest in her unique case. Because never in all my years have I had a case quite like hers and it drew me in as soon as I became aware of her.

From the moment she was out of her mother's womb she's had it hard. She was originally a identical twin, but her twin sister didn't survive her mother's womb and by all accounts she shouldn't have either - her father and her mother had a undiagnosed genetic incompatibility and it wasn't picked up on until it was too late resulting in a early term labour. Those were always hard, lives that should have been bright and enduring but were extinguished too early through no fault of their own. Or anyone else's.

Sometimes that happened and as hard as it is to remember and believe - everything happens for a reason. 

But she was a little miracle. Born at 26 weeks gestation, the doctors at the time were unsure of her chances of survival being so little and utterly alone in a way she hadn't been since her conception. These cases are usually high risk anyway but there was the added concern that her departed twin would be a factor they had rarely seen in a premature baby before. If anything though, she was stronger than they had expected and she continued to grow stronger and stronger until they discharged her from the NICU and then PICU by the time she would have been in gestation for her full term.

And, my, she was such a happy and healthy little baby that grew into a happy and healthy - if inquisitive - toddler. Around 18 months old she began to have high temperatures and resulting seizures. Doctors scrambled to diagnose and treat her but their leading diagnosis was a brain tumour, it explained a lot of her symptoms - the fevers, the seizures and the sixth nerve palsy in her left eye that flared and worsened any time her fever spiked. She spent a lot of time in and out of hospital and it wasn't until she was 3 that her parents were told it wasn't a brain tumour after all.

The next time she attended the hospital she was 7 years old and had been in a car accident with her father. Her father had escaped relatively unscathed but she had not been as lucky. It was touch and go for a while, with another stint in PICU, but she defied expectations once again, she grew stronger and was discharged.

When she was 9 years old she contracted an especially dangerous form of food poisoning. Previous to this time she'd had food poisoning twice already, both of those were mild cases and nothing like what she was hospitalised once again with. The doctors on her case then had told her parents that they weren't sure she would pull through this bout of food poisoning. Because she was rapidly losing weight, no hydration treatments were working as she couldn't keep anything down and her body was under a lot of stress from the tests and treatments they were trying to save her life. Her parents called it a miracle she once again pulled through.

Her teens passed without incident - aside from broken fingers here, infections and a broken limb there - until she was 19 and almost didn't make it to the hospital in time when her appendix burst. Within 4 hours of seeing her doctor at home, about the pain and vomiting, she was at the hospital and unconscious on the surgeons table to have it removed. It seemed once again she'd had a brush with death.

The next one came when she was 27 and she was married and pregnant with her first child. She'd had some complications during labour but miraculously both her and her newborn son had survived.

And finally in her older years she's had reoccurring heart problems. She hadn't been diagnosed until her husband passed away 3 years ago and she'd had her first major heart attack. And now it seemed with each attack she was weaker and weaker. I've attended each time and each time I find myself relieved she's recovered and stepped out of the hospital once again.

But this time is different, I can feel it in the pit of my stomach. 

I step into her room, she's dozing and doesn't notice me right away so I look around her room. I see vases of flowers, cards from family and well wishers and drawings, that are likely from her grandchildren, covering every available surface. It warms my heart that she is so loved that, despite the room only containing her small and fragile frame, it doesn't feel empty in here in the slightest. 

I move my eyes from her surroundings and take her in for the last time. She looks so small in her bed piled under her blankets - a generic hospital one with a crocheted patchwork blanket on top of that. My eyes are drawn to the multiple wires crisscrossing her, the blood pressure cuff on her upper arm and the heart monitor wires spreading across her side and disappearing into the thin light pink nightgown she's wearing, I see bruises along her hands and her arms where the doctors have been taking her blood. And then my eyes fall on her face, she looks peaceful but she's also pale and despite the oxygen tubes along her cheekbones pushing clean oxygen up her nose to aid her breathing, I can see she's short of breath - even in sleep.

I step closer to her and I move a finger along the soft fabric of the homemade crochet blanket as her eyelids flutter open.

"Hi." She says quietly, her face brightening as she sees me in her room. "It's good to see you again." 

I smile at her and lay my hand on hers laying on the bed at her side. My glow flaring a little to comfort her any way I can, my mind screaming this is the last time I'll see her and so I try to put her at ease. The normally drab hospital room is brightened by the light I emit, though none of the passing staff, patients or visitors just outside the room can see it, or me.

Only she can see me, as she has each time they thought she wouldn't pull through. Because I've been here for her, helping to ensure she did pull through, helping her strengthen and fight for her life - to be able to live it! To live her life how her twin never would and how she shouldn't have been able to either if she hadn't defied the odds that very first time and from her very first breath.

"Am I getting through this one?" She asks me, her voice no more than a whisper.

I try to find words but they've failed me, anything I could possibly say or would usually say is clogged in my throat. I need not reply to her though, I know she already knows that this is it.

The room dims, only slightly, as a slight breeze drifts past us both, ruffling my unbound hair I take a deep breath in smelling a plethora of my favourite things - the smell of grass after it's rained, the smell of cooking pancake batter, the smell of a freshly made cup of citrus tea and the smell of him most of all - smoky, masculine and utterly unique.

This has happened each time it looked like it was the end for her story. This time is different though. I can feel it, saddening in its finality, the moment he properly arrives.

A hand sheathed in shadows lands lightly on my shoulder as I give her a sad smile, she smiles back as tears line her eyes and spill down her cheeks while my own eyes water for her. I don't let my smile fade though, even through my own tears.

He gets closer, stepping up right behind me, my dress moving slightly with his movement. His mouth close to my ear as his free hand squeezes mine. "I'll take care of her, my love." He promises, speaking quietly and gently.

I spin around, my light meeting his shadows as I look up at him not needing to speak for him to know my turmoil. He dips his head to press his forehead against mine as he moves his hand from my shoulder to my cheek, his thumb brushing the tear away as it slips down my cheek. "Cardan." I breathe, closing my eyes and fisting my hands into the clothing covering his waist and clinging onto it. It never gets easier, the ache of a life ended never lets up but he makes it bearable, he makes it a little easier to breathe and carry on.

I know he'll look after her in death though, as I did in life.

"Are you ready, Jude?" He asks me in a whisper, his forehead still pressed to mine. I open my eyes and look into his coal black and gold ones, nodding and releasing a slightly shaky breath. He knows I hate this part.

I release his waist and his hands drop from me as he rounds her bed, smiling gently at her. And now I'm breathless for another reason, I truly hate this part but, it never fails to take my breath away how he is with them at the end. All reassuring smiles, tender handholding and leaning over to whisper gentle words of what awaits them in the next life. He repeats the same words over and over and I hear them so often that as he says them to her I whisper along as I step up to her, grasping her other hand - _love, happiness and peace._

"Are you ready?" He asks her quietly, brushing his free hand over her hair.

She looks over to me with a small tearful smile, before looking back to him and nodding.

He looks up at me, his smile turning sad, as he gently pulls on her hand and her soul separates from her body. I let out a little whimper as the monitors around us start to beep, punctuated by a shrill unending alarm coming from the heart monitor. We all step back as staff flood into the room.

He may not completely understand my job as it's the complete opposite of his own but he knows it's difficult for me when a life comes to an end, especially one I've grown attached to as I often do. Each time a loss hits me as hard as this I tell myself and him that I'll keep my distance in future and not allow myself to get attached as completely as I do. He smiles knowingly at me though, a smile that never fails to make me melt, because he knows me so wholly that he sees it for the farce it is, that he knows as well as I that I'll continue to get emotionally involved and shatter anew from the heartbreak when he comes to collect them.

Though he may not understand the feelings I often have, that doesn't prevent him from always being there to pick up all of my broken pieces, whispering promises that he'll care for them all when it can no longer fall to me. Promising that he'll safely see them to where they'll spend their forever with their loved ones. Telling me that he's proud of me and my desire for everyone to live, for everyone to push through and show their strength when the odds are against them. That he's proud of me for continuing to get emotionally invested and not taking the easy way out and guarding myself against it by withdrawing from those who need me.

Still holding tight onto the hand of her soul in his left hand, he raises his right hand to my cheek once more brushing away another tear as his shadows begin to swirl and he departs with her to take her onto her forever.

I don't stick around to watch as the doctors try to bring her back, I leave quickly and walk back through the corridors as I remember she was a fighter all the way through and how I'm proud of her for her fight. Cardan may be proud of me for pushing and fighting for the souls I help to live but I wouldn't be able to do that if they had no desire to survive in the first place. And again I'm struck by how much I feel for him, how his job brings me heartache but he never fails to soothe it and make me whole again. How I'm proud of him, of my Cardan. I'm proud he's held onto his sense of humanity despite the nature of his work. I'm proud that, though he doesn't understand how hard it is for me when a life ends, he knows just the right thing to say and do to ease the heartbreak.

And I know I'll continue to get to involved in the lives of the living but I'll never truly fear the pain and heartache their ends bring me because I have him. And I will for all time, because he's my forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> Who figured early on that Jude is Life and Cardan is Death in this little fic of mine?
> 
> I can't say I've had experience with all the things that happen to my original character in this fic but 3 of the hospital trips she takes are direct from my own experience.
> 
> Thanks for reading  
> <3


End file.
